New environmental policy to deal with rogue miners

Munyaradzi Musiiwa, Midlands Correspondent

RUNDE Rural District Council has adopted a new environmental policy that would enable the local authority to impose heavy fines and cease operations of rogue miners who fail to comply with environmental laws as it moves to address perpetual land degradation and deforestation due to mining activities.

The local authority approved the policies in a full council meeting held on Tuesday in Zvishavane as councillors concurred that the miners were now an environmental menace. Runde RDC chief executive officer Mr Godden Moyo said the local authority was working with organisations such as Centre for Conflict Management and Transformation (CCMT) to craft environmental policies to address issues of deforestation, land degradation among other issues that are being caused by mining and farming activities.

“Zvishavane is a mining community and we have serious challenges of lack of compliance by miners in the area. We passed environmental policies that compel miners to comply with environmental laws as well as practising sustainable mining that preserves the environment. Issues of land degradation as a result of mining activities are on record and we have been grappling with miners to comply with environmental laws and Environmental Management Agency (Ema). The policies are not restricted to mining but cover a wide spectrum although mining is one of the areas,” he said.